1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to data processing and more particularly to migrating entity relationship data from an object oriented program environment to a relational database. The present invention further relates to providing functionality to efficiently search and reconstruct the entity relationship data in the relational database.
2. Description of the Related Art
Databases are computerized information storage and retrieval systems. The most prevalent type of database is the relational database, a tabular database in which data is defined so that it can be reorganized and accessed in a number of different ways. A distributed database is one that can be dispersed or replicated among different points in a network. An object-oriented programming database is one that is congruent with the data defined in object classes and subclasses.
A relational database management system (RDBMS) is a computer database management system that uses relational techniques and is capable of storing and retrieving large volumes of data. Further, large scale relational database management systems can be implemented to support thousands of users accessing databases via a wide assortment of applications. An RDBMS can be structured to support a variety of different types of operations for a requesting entity (e.g., an application, the operating system or an end user). Such operations can be configured to retrieve, add, modify and delete information being stored and managed by the RDBMS. Standard database access methods support these operations using high-level query languages, such as the Structured Query Language (SQL).
The functionality provided by relational databases is especially useful for MicroArray Analysis, one of the domains within Life Sciences. The MicroArray research community has architected a specification for MicroArray Gene Expression (MAGE) data which incorporates the different entities and relationships that are involved in MicroArray research. Large volumes of MAGE data are present in a variety of applications implemented in numerous object oriented programming environments. It is very important for researchers to be able to query and manipulate this data in order to appropriately analyze the data. However, due to issues such as large volumes of data (in the order of terabytes), it is technically cumbersome for researchers to work with data in an object oriented program environment. It would be advantageous to manage this data in a relational database environment.
However, there are numerous difficulties related to migrating MAGE data to a relational database implementation. One of the greatest difficulties is the reconstruction of all aspects of data entity relationships within the relational database. Object oriented program environments and relational database environments rely on considerably different conceptual bases. For this reason, those skilled in the art will appreciate that relationships between entities in an object oriented program environment and the corresponding relationships in a relational environment are represented in very different ways. For instance, in the case of MAGE implementations, large numbers of relational database objects are required to represent all the necessary MAGE entities and the relationships between the entities. The MAGE relational database footprint may span hundreds of tables (and other data structures), which makes the importing of data and reconstruction of entity relationships nontrivial.
Therefore, what is needed is an improved system and method for transferring entity relationship data from an object oriented program environment to a relational database. Once in the relational database, there is a further need to facilitate the searching and reconstruction of entity relationships.